Want to know who all are going to benefit from Kejriwal's odd-even rule for private vehicles?

Arvind Kejriwal’s move to allow private vehicles with even and odd registration numbers may be beneficial for some startups as the move could create an opportunity.Madhav Chanchani&Biswarup Gooptu | ET Bureau | December 07, 2015, 08:12 IST

BENGALURU | NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s move to allow private vehicles with even and odd registration numbers on alternate days from January 1 may have raised hackles for Delhi residents, but for some startups the move could create an opportunity.

Nascent online bus aggregation startups like Shuttl and ZipGo, besides Ola Bus services could see an uptick in adoption if the measure is implement.

Shuttl, founded earlier this year, is one of the largest bus aggregation players in the Delhi-NCR region with 500 vehicles on its network. Others like ZipGo have also entered the Delhi market, announcing the launch of women only buses.

According to Shuttl Founder Amit Singh, the city’s public transport system is bursting at the seams with 3 million people using the metro rail and 5 million using buses every day.

The owners of the 3 million private vehicles in the city — 50% of these vehicles will be off roads if the odd-even rule is implemented — need a credible option.

"We will start routes where we see there is more pain, and should benefit from it. But implementation will take time," said Singh, whose startup is backed by venture capital firm Sequoia. Shuttl does around 13,000-15,000 rides per day for a mix of short and long routes.

Other players like Mumbai-based rBus are also evaluating a Delhi launch, even as Kejriwal later said the odd-even rule will be an experiment for the first two weeks of January.

The chief minister’s decision came after the Delhi High Court said the national capital is like a gas chamber.

"No doubt, it could turn out to be a huge opportunity. Delhi state authorities cannot increase public transport capacity in such a short span of time, and this could turn out to be a boon for companies engaged in the passenger transportation sector," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Noida-based online marketplace and mobile wallet player Paytm.

Paytm is an investor in Chandigarh-based SoCo-Mo Technologies, which owns and operates on-demand delivery services startup Jugnoo, which, in turn, also operates in the taxi aggregation space, having acquired taxi aggregator Bookmycab in a cash-and-stock deal in July this year.

Cab aggregation players like Uber and Ola, who have started rolling out car-pooling services in Bengaluru, are waiting to gauge the impact of the measure.

But the ruling could also lead to higher surge pricing in the city as half of the private vehicles will stay off the road.

"Delhi being one of our major cities and headquarter, we will be looking to bring UberPool there very soon," said an Uber spokesperson. Uber currently has 2,50,000 driver partners across 22 cities, and Delhi is its fifth largest in India.

Some also feel that it’s not known if measures like these work, and have to be much more nuanced. But since the government wants to implement them in a short span, it will give opportunity to public and private players to work together.

"It is a big opportunity for the likes of Ola and Uber, and should enable them to scale up operations.

This could also allow the government and the ride-hailing apps to work as partners, and put behind them, the antagonistic relationship they have shared till now," said Saurabh Srivastava, chairman of India Angel Network and former chairman of IT lobby group Nasscom.

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